Iomega eGo

External hard drives are not all about storage and performance, they also add to your personality if you do carry one along with you everywhere. Iomega reiterated the fact with their Iomega eGo Portable hard drive that not only promises to deliver strong performance but also act as a fasion accessory!

Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive specifications :

• Dimensions : 3.5″ x 5.2″ x 0.7″
• Exterior color : Red, Silver
• Capacity : 160GB
• External data transfer rate : 480 Mbps
• Drive speed : 5400rpm
• Cache : 8MB
• OS Compatibility : Mac OS X, Windows 2000 or later
• Warranty : 1 year
• Approx. price : $110

The drive is extremely thin at just 0.7″ and the red color gives it a flashy look, although there is also a more subdued silver color. The build quality of the drive is impressive and feels solid and sturdy. The drive is made of anodized aluminum and polished steel which is mainly responsible for its looks. The drive is priced extremely competitively priced at just $110.

The hard drive is powered by a USB-port itself instead of those bulky adapters. Iomega has surprisingly placed the activity LED at the rear of the drive, which is quite inexplicable. The drive is light weight also making for a great companion. The drive has DropGuard feature which protects the drive from shocks when not in use as the drive has extra padding inside the case to protect it from shocks.

The drive comes preformatted with FAT32 partition which can be read by both Mac and Windows and for that matter even Linux. If you intend to use it with OS X primarily then format it with Disk Utility to HFS file format. The drive bundles the EMC’s Restrospect Express 6.1 software to carry out the various tasks. The updated version compatible with OS X Leopard is available on their site. The software can be used to make partial/full backups, duplicate images, create bootable recovery CD but sadly can’t do encryption of data.

The drive has impressive performance. Writing assorted data to drive yielded an average write speed of 20MBps, one of the best in its category. The read speed from the drive is even better at 22Mbps. Surely, the Iomega eGO Portable Hard Drive manages to pull in good read/write speeds along with great looks!

Pros :

• Slim and small dimensions
• Attractive look
• USB Powered
• Good performance
• Backup software included

Cons :

• Backup software not Mac compatible
• No encryption of data utility

Final Thoughts

The Iomega eGO Portable Hard Drive is an excellent drive from Iomega and manages to put everything in place perfectly. The only flaws that you van find are with the bundled software. So, there is no doubt that if you are looking for a portable drive, grab this one.

My Rating : 4.25/5

Cowon A3

Portable music players with huge storage space are always on one’s hit list. But finding the right one has never been an easy task as the market has seen a big revolution and iPod Touch. It has now set new benchmarks for future generation PMPs through it excellent interface and by integrating various other features although it still needs improvement on the sound quality. Cowon players are though known for their sound quality and Cowon A3 is no exception.

Cowon A3 specifications :

• Dimensions : 5.2″ x 0.9″ x 3.1″
• Display : 4″ TFT screen
• Hard Disk capacity : 60GB
• PDF Viewer, Text Viewer
• Image formats supported : BMP,GIF,PNG,RAW,JPEG,TIFF
• Audio formats supported : AAC,MP3,WAV,WMA,FLAC etc.
• Video formats supported : AVI,VOB,MPEG,XviD,DivX etc.
• Rechargeable Lithium battery
• Approx. Price : $360

The Cowon A3 is the successor of Cowon A2 which had gained a lot of reputation for itself. The Cowon A3 comes in two hard disk capacities, a 30GB model and a 60GB one. The Cowon A3 scores high due to its big screen but loses out on its thickness which stands at 0.9″ which is not slim by any means.

The design of the Cowon A3 is pretty simple and it is a rectangle with screen occupying most of the space and the buttons occupying the rest of it on the right side of it. There isn’t any fancy or eye-catching about it and also the screen is not touchscreen which is a bit of disappointment.

The display is a big 4″ display which evens beats the iPod Touch screen size. The display is clarity is amazing and it is a pleasure to watch videos on it. But on the downside the screen is very prone to fingerprints and scratches.The buttons on the right side of the screen are mainly for navigation and controlling various media player controls. The joystick isn’t very friendly to use though.

The player supports a huge range of formats which is really good. Having wide range of format support is never bad but you should stick to a couple of them which offer you better battery backup and offer good quality without taking up too much space. The audio file sorting mechanism in Cowon A3 is certainly not quite what we see in today’s latest generation devices as it has limited sorting options.

The performance is the forte of the player. It offers exceptionally good video playback and equally good audio sound quality through in the earphones. The external stereo speakers ain’t bad either and do the job quite well.

Some of the drawbacks of the player include no WiFi support, no touchscreen and the display is highly reflective. Also the player looses out on looks. But apart from that the player simply rocks!

Pros :

• Excellent video playback
• Amazing audio sound quality
• Big and great display clarity
• Wide range of formats supported

Cons :

• Screen prone to fingerprints and scratches
• No WiFi support
• Joystick is not friendly
• No touchscreen

Final Thoughts

The Cowon A3 has superb audio and video quality that will leave you spellbound. It manages to get almost everything right except for a few features which off-late have made their entry to PMPs like WiFi. If you do not care about the cool interface of iPhone or don’t need anything more than a great PMP then go ahead with Cowon A3!

My Rating : 4/5